For Story Ideas, They Just Left It To `Beaver`

December 23, 1985|By Lorenzo Benet, Los Angeles Daily News.

LOS ANGELES — During a 1958 Labor Day picnic in a Des Moines, Iowa, park, 10-year-old Richard Connelly watched in awe as ``Leave It to Beaver`` stars Jerry Mathers and Tony Dow stood on a flatbed truck and signed autographs for children.

Connelly`s father, co-creator of the television series, noticed his son was missing out on the attention. Joe Connelly didn`t think that was fair to the boy who had played a large part in inspiring the timeless sitcom on family life in middle America.

``This is the real Beaver,`` Connelly announced to the crowd, gesturing toward his son.

At 8, young Richard Connelly chopped off his syllables, pronouncing words like forgot as `got, and expelled as `spelled. He cried, broke windows, was bullied by bigger kids, disobeyed his parents and got into fights at school. He was an ordinary, likable youngster who lived in the shadow of his older brother. Ditto for Beaver, the creation of television writers Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher.

``Leave It to Beaver`` had its premiere in 1957, when the air waves were dominated by ``Gunsmoke,`` ``Father Knows Best`` and ``The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.`` It was the time of the western and the family sitcom. But most of the successful family shows focused on the adults. Connelly and Mosher, who plied their trade writing scripts for the ``Amos `n` Andy`` radio show for 12 years, decided it was time for a family comedy that concentrated on the kids, and wrote Irwin Applebaum, author of ``The World According to Beaver.`` CBS agreed and awarded the show a prime-time slot.

For ideas, the writers looked to their own backgrounds and their families. In addition to Richard, Joe Connelly looked to his other son, Jay. He was a fine athlete and combed his hair painstakingly; these later became traits of Beaver`s older brother, Wally, played by Dow. The character of Beaver`s mother, June Cleaver, played by actress Barbara Billingsley, bore a striking resemblance to Connelly`s late wife, Katie. Mosher also borrowed traits from his wife and two children.

Connelly and Mosher didn`t stop with personality characteristics. At home and on family outings, the pair listened carefully to their children`s conversations, dutifully recording their expressions and vocabulary. Where else would they find such classic Wally and Beaver words as knucklehead, kook, globby guy, suspendered, `tricity and the willies?

Minor family catastrophes--broken windows, peer hassles, boy-girl problems--also found their way into ``Beaver`` episodes. As a boy, Richard Connelly once was dressed in short pants and sent to school by his

grandmother. Young Connelly winced, but his father found it amusing. Not long after that, Beaver suffered the same humiliation when Aunt Martha dressed him for school in an Eton jacket, short pants, knee socks and a cap.

``Sometimes the endings were different,`` Richard`s wife, Stephanie, said from the couple`s Woodland Hills home. ``Ward (Beaver`s television father, played by Hugh Beaumont) tried to save Beaver from wearing shorts by meeting him in the garage with a pair of pants. Rick`s dad just chuckled.``

Another time, Richard`s mother sent him to a birthday party with a rubber duck as a present. But he was so embarrassed that he threw away the duck and gave his friend his own camera. Beaver played out the incident in the

``Forgotten Party.``

Richard once broke his parents` car window playing catch with his brother. To cover up the accident, they rolled down the window. But later they confessed.

``In the actual show, Ward comes along, slams the door and thinks he broke the window,`` Richard said. ``When the boys confess, Ward compliments them for telling the truth. I think (Jay and I) got in trouble.``

circle of friends. The Haskell character, a friend of Wally who always picked on Beaver, wasn`t any different in real life.

``He was a friend of my brother`s, and he was always on my case,``

Connelly recalled.

Connelly said he didn`t realize how popular ``Leave It to Beaver`` was until he accompanied his father on a promotional tour. ``My father used to take us back East,`` Connelly said. ``One time we were touring a zoo in New York, and all these kids spotted (Mathers) and said, `the Beav, the Beav.```

But his childhood lifestyle bore no resemblance to Beaver`s middle-America, small-town upbringing in suburban Mayfield. Connelly and his six brothers and sisters grew up in a Bel-Air mansion, complete with maids, cooks and butlers.

In those days, young Connelly met such Hollywood luminaries as Alfred Hitchcock, Walt Disney and Elvis Presley. He also was friendly with child actor Richard Correll, who played Beaver`s friend Richard Rickover.

Although their birthdays are only two days apart and they attended Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, Connelly and Mathers traveled in different circles.